WEIRD FACTS

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The Yangtze alone discharges as much as 1.5 million tons of plastic waste each year.

Cheap, durable and multifunctional, plastic is one of humanity’s most successful inventions. From the 1950s to 2015, we’ve produced 8.3 billion metric tons of the stuff. By now, it’s everywhere. It’s also non-biodegradable. And that’s devastating the environment. Only 9% of all plastic waste has been recycled, and another 12% has been incinerated. That means that almost 80%—nearly 6.3 billion tons—has turned into waste with no half-life to speak of: condemned to an eternity as landfill, litter or ocean-clogging junk.

Every year, plastic kills around 1 million seabirds, 100,000 sea mammals and inestimable numbers of fish. The volume of plastic trash in the world’s oceans is currently estimated to be around 150 million tons. No less than eight million tons are added to that every year—that’s one truckload every minute. Between 0.5 and 2.75 million tons come from rivers alone.

Large rivers are particularly efficient conveyors of plastic waste to the oceans, especially in countries lacking a well-developed waste management infrastructure. Up to 95% of river-borne plastic comes from just 10 rivers, scientists at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany have found.

The scientists analysed data on both microplastic debris (<5mm) such as beads and fibres, as well as microplastic objects (plastic bottles, bags, etc.) from 79 sampling sites on 57 of the world’s largest rivers, singling out the 10 mapped out here as the biggest culprits, due to “mismanagement of plastic waste in their watersheds”.

As this map shows, eight of the rivers are in Asia.

Four are solely in China:

The Yangtze, which flows into the East China Sea.

The Hai He and the Yellow River, both debouching in the Yellow Sea.

The Pearl River, going into the South China Sea.

Two others closely involve China:

The Amur rises in Russia and flows into the Sea of Okhotsk, but for a large part of its course forms the border with China (where it’s called Heilong Jang).

The Mekong rises in China, but touches or crosses Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam on its way to the South China Sea.

Two flow through the Indian subcontinent:

The Indus, which rises in China and crosses India, but mainly runs through Pakistan, ending in the Arabian Sea.

The Ganges, flowing through India and Bangladesh, into the Bay of Bengal.

The two non-Asian rivers are both in Africa:

The Nile, with two sources in Ethiopia (Blue Nile) and Rwanda (White Nile) and flowing through Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt towards the Mediterranean.

The Niger, rising in Guinea and flowing through Mali, Niger, Benin and Nigeria into the Gulf of Guinea.

Not all of these rivers are equally guilty. As the graph below shows, the Yangtze is the main culprit, ejecting around 1.5 million tonnes of plastic into the East China Sea. That’s more than the other nine rivers combined.

While awareness of the issue is rising, plastic pollution itself is still on the increase as well. In 2016, 480 billion plastic bottles were sold globally. By 2021, that figure will be close to 540 billion. Fewer than half of that total is currently recycled.

If current trends continue, the amount of plastic dumped into the ocean will increase from one truckload every minute today to one every 15 seconds in 2050, by which time plastic waste will literally outweigh all the fish in the ocean.

However, as the scientists from Leipzig point out, quick fixes are possible. Focusing waste management efforts on just these 10 rivers could put a serious dent in the plastic pollution trend. Halving the discharge of plastic waste in Yangtze, Ganges, Niger and the other seven rivers listed above would reduce the global flow of river-borne plastic into the oceans by no less than 45%.

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The U.S. is Cow Country, and other lessons from this land use map

Yes, this is America. The borders are all new, but the areas are correct; this is a map of land use in the contiguous United States, each category corralled into a homogenous rectangle. As you can see, humans have a minority stake in the nation. The U.S. is Cow Country.

Of course, this is not what America really looks like. The 1.9 billion acres in the coterminous states are a coast-to-coast jumble of residential areas, industrial zones, farmlands and more. This map gives all that the Ursus Wehrli treatment.

The results are strangely satisfying ‘tidied-up’ images, and so is this map, regimenting statistical data into coherent cartographic cohorts. It doesn’t even look too much out of order, given that most U.S. states are at least partially rectangular in shape anyway. The result: an illuminating overview of land management in the Lower 48.

The map is based on the six major land use (MLU) categories as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but also shows various subdivisions.

Pasture/range

654 million acres (about 35% of the total)

Judging by land use, the U.S. is dominated by cattle. More than one-third of the area of the contiguous states is given up to pasture—more than any other land use type. Most of it is for cows, with much smaller areas nibbled by horses, and sheep/goats/other.

About a quarter of pastureland is federally administered, mainly in the western states.

Adding up pasture and cropland used to produce feed (124.7 million acres), cattle dominate 41% of all land in the contiguous U.S.

Forest

539 million acres (28.5%)

These are forested areas outside of parks and reserves. About a quarter of the contiguous states are covered in these unprotected wooded areas.

About 11 million acres of timber are harvested every year, but thanks to regrowth, U.S. timber stock grew by about 1% per annum from 2007 to 2012.

The largest private owner of timberlands in the U.S. is a company called Weyerhaeuser. It owns 12.4 million acres or 2.3% of all available timber. Put differently: that’s an area almost the size of West Virginia (or, on this map, a private fiefdom spanning the Arizona-New Mexico border).

Cropland

391 million acres (21%)

More of it is used for livestock feed (127 million acres) than for human consumption (77 million acres).

Most of the land planted with food we eat is covered by wheat, followed by soybeans, peanuts and oilseeds.

More land is dedicated to sugarcane and sugarbeets and maple syrup than to vegetables.

More than a third of the entire corn crop, or around 38 million acres, is dedicated to ethanol, for bio-diesel.

Around 21.5 million acres are planted with wheat for export, 63 million acres are used for growing other grain and feed exports.

Special use

168 million acres (9%)

Most of this is nature reserves, either state or national parks (15 and 29 million acres, respectively), but most of all federal wilderness areas (64 million acres).

Military areas cover around 25 million acres. That’s about the size of Ohio.

Perhaps surprisingly, rural highways cover no less than 21 million acres. Farmsteads add up to 8 million acres, almost enough to cover New Hampshire.

Airports and railroads cover 3 million acres each, equal to the area of Connecticut (each) or Vermont (together).

Miscellaneous

69 million acres (3.6%)

Swamps, marshes, deserts, non-harvestable forests and generally any barren land of low economic value. Most of this category (about 50 million acres) is made up of rural residential lands.

Urban

69 million acres (3.6%)

About four in five Americans live in urban areas, which is about the size of the Northeast. Sounds like a good balance with nature. But urban areas have quadrupled in size since 1945, and are adding about a million acres—that’s four of the squares on this map—each year.

For reference, the map indicates the approximate outlines of state borders and, in thinner white lines, a grid of squares with an area of 250,000 acres each.

For instance, that’s the area covered by Christmas trees (conveniently corralled into one location on the coast of Georgia for this map).

Double that area is covered by tobacco plants (half a million acres), and double again by flowers (a million acres), both growing on the shores of North Carolina.

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A new look at sea-level rise projections discovered a threat to coastal internet infrastructure that may come much sooner than expected.

By Rob Goodier –

Getty Images – Brendan Smialowski.

Climate change threatens many facets of modern human life, from eroding coastlines, climbing temperatures, and ocean acidification. But these problems extend beyond our natural world — they affect our digital world as well.

“Our findings are clear,” Paul Barford, a computer science professor and the University of Wisconsin-Madison told Popular Mechanics. “A good deal of internet infrastructure will be underwater in the next 15 years.”

“A good deal of internet infrastructure will be underwater in the next 15 years.”

In a study, Barford and his team discovered that more than 4,000 miles of buried fiber optic cable may be underwater and 1,100 nodes may be surrounded by water in just 15 years. To put that in perspective, New York City, one of the most at-risk metropolitan areas, would lose nearly 20 percent of its metro conduit and 32 percent of its long-haul conduit to rising sea levels. That’s enough to cripple internet access in the area.

What We Could Lose

To come to this concerning conclusion, researchers compared two datasets. One was the Internet Atlas, a map charting the physical location of the internet. This map geocodes infrastructure from more than 1,500 internet service providers around the world.

The researchers focused on two kinds of infrastructure: buried conduit, which includes long-haul and metro fiber; and nodes, including landing points where deep sea transoceanic fiber comes ashore, data centers, colocation facilities, and points of presence that house servers, routers, and other hardware. On the outside, nodes can look like small huts and nondescript buildings, but on the inside they are the points where buried cables terminate.

Seawater inundation projected for New York City by 2033. The blue area is estimated to be underwater in 15 years due to sea level rise. – Paul Barford/UW-Madison

The other piece of data was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s projection of sea level rise inundation. NOAA’s data refashions the world and its coastlines 100 years in the future, drawing on published research to describe a range of best- and worst-case scenarios. The data they use predicted a best-case rise of one foot and a worst-case rise of eight feet. Barford and his team used a range between one foot and six feet.

What they found wasn’t good. In the near term, internet infrastructure would experience a “devastating impact.” That’s because nodes are often clustered at low-elevations around dense populations. In fact, the study found that most of the damage could occur within 15 years, regardless of the scenario.

(For the balance of this article please visit: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a22454576/climate-change-internet-damage/)

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by Stephen Johnson – Scott Santens via Flickr. Chicago may become one of the first U.S. cities to implement a universal basic income program (UBI).The proposal, introduced by Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar, would create a small-scale UBI experiment that gives 1,000 families $500 per month with no strings attached, and would also change the Earned Income Tax Credit for participating families to give them monthly payments instead of a lump sum. At least several dozen lawmakers have endorsed the proposal so far.Pawar said UBI is not only a way to ensure people still get paid as automation displaces their jobs, but that it’s also a safeguard against the inevitable sociopolitical strife that would follow.

“From a race and class perspective, just know that 66 percent of long-haul truck drivers are middle-aged white men,” he told The Intercept. “So if you put them out of work without any investment in new jobs or in a social support system so that they transition from their job to another job, these race and class and geographical divides are going to grow.”

On a national level, support for UBI seems split. A survey from Northeastern University and Gallup showed in February that about 48 percent of Americans would support a UBI program, 46 percent of supporters would pay higher personal taxes to support one, and 80 percent of supporters say companies should pay higher taxes to fund it.

Support for UBI seems to differ among political groups. In the February survey, about 65 percent of Democrats voiced support for UBI while only 28 percent of Republicans did. Independents were in the middle.

But is UBI a feasible solution to the looming threats of automation? After all, opponents argue the main effect of giving people free money would be that they start working less.

“It is reasonable to expect an unconditional cash transfer, such as a universal income, to decrease employment,” economist Damon Jones, who’s studied the effects of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, which provides citizens of Alaska with an annual cash dividend, told Futurity.

In a paper published earlier this year, Jones and fellow economist Ioana Marinescu found that unconditional cash transfers in Alaska had no negative effects on employment, and actually increased part-time work.

“A key concern with a universal basic income is that it could discourage people from working,” Jones said. “But our research shows that the possible reductions in employment seem to be offset by increases in spending that in turn increase the demand for more workers.”

Pawar said that providing families with an income floor would enable them to make better financial decisions and prepare for emergencies.

“Nearly 70 percent of Americans don’t have $1,000 in the bank for an emergency,” Pawar told The Intercept. “UBI could be an incredible benefit for people who are working and are having a tough time making ends meet or putting food on the table at the end of the month. … It’s time to start thinking about direct cash transfers to people so that they can start making plans about how they’re going to get by.”

He also argued that big tech companies—many of which are led by figures who’ve endorsed UBI, like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman—should pay higher taxes to fund UBI programs.

“My response to Amazon, and Tesla, and Ford, and Uber … we need to start having a conversation about automation and a regulatory framework so that if jobs simply go away, what are we going to do with the workforce? … If [those companies are] reticent to pay their fair share in taxes and still want tax incentives and at the same time automate jobs, what do you think is going to happen?” Pawar told The Intercept. “These divisions are going to grow and, in many ways, we’re sitting on a powder keg.”

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Each SolarGap slat is equipped with an array of solar panels Regular window blinds already help people to save electricity – by keeping incoming sunlight from heating a room up, they reduce the need to run an air conditioner. SolarGaps, however, take things a step further. Each slat is equipped with an array of monocrystalline solar panels, which generate electricity via the very sunlight that they’re blocking. Additionally, the blinds use a light sensor to track the sun, automatically changing the angle of the slats in order to best absorb its rays.

Invented by entrepreneur Yevgen Erik, SolarGaps are reportedly able to generate up to 100 watt-hours of energy for every square meter when mounted on the outside of a window, or up to 50 watt-hours when mounted inside.

The energy that they produce can be fed into the municipal grid and sold to the local utility company, stored in a battery for later use, or it can be used as it’s being generated, for purposes such as charging electronic devices.

Although the slats do automatically change their angle to track the sun, the blinds can also be manually operated via an iOS/Android app. Not only does the software allow users to open and close the blinds at will, but it also lets them set the blinds on a schedule, monitor how much energy they’re producing, or even set them so that they open whenever someone enters the room (they have a built-in motion sensors).

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It might not be your favorite thing on the dinner plate, but broccoli’s disease-fighting powers just got even stronger (Credit: Depositphotos/sarymsakov)Everyone knows eating veggies helps enhance health. But let’s face it, a plate of broccoli has nothing on a bowl of pasta. But before you brush those little tree tops aside, science has found yet another reason why consuming vegetables is good for us. The information is compelling enough that some people might want to add more green to their plates to help protect their guts.

But if you find it hard to get down these nutrient powerhouses, you might want to pay attention to a new study from Pennsylvania State University – especially if you suffer from digestive issues.

By working with mice, researchers there have figured out that when the rodents ate broccoli, they could better tolerate digestive issues that presented like leaky gut and colitis than mice who weren’t fed the veg.

“There are a lot of reasons we want to explore helping with gastrointestinal health and one reason is if you have problems, like a leaky gut, and start to suffer inflammation, that may then lead to other conditions, like arthritis and heart disease,” said Gary Perdew, professor of agricultural sciences at Penn State. “Keeping your gut healthy and making sure you have good barrier functions so you’re not getting this leaky effect would be really big.”

Perdew and his team believe the reason the broccoli was effective is thanks to the way certain compounds it contains bind to gut receptors known as Aryl hydrocarbon receptors, or AHRs. When broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables break down in the stomach, one of the resulting compounds is known as indolocarbazole, or ICZ.

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A new study has found that new ultra-high-strength MRIs can cause toxic mercury to leak from amalgam fillings (Credit: icefront/Depositphotos).

The fact mercury makes up roughly 50 percent of the content of dental amalgam is a contentious subject for many, and a new study that found MRIs can release the toxic heavy metal from fillings is sure to give those in the anti-amalgam camp even more to chew on. But before you start digging all the fillings from your teeth with a chisel, it’s worth noting that this effect was only found to relate to new ultra-high-strength MRIs.

Most current MRI machines are rated as 1.5-T and 3-T, where the ‘T’ stands for Tesla, the unit of measurement used to describe the strength of an MRI’s magnet. Any mercury leakage as a result of exposure to a 1.5-T or 3-T MRI is minimal, however, there are new 7-T MRI machines capable of producing more detailed images whose effect on amalgam fillings has not been studied. Dr Selmi Yilmaz and Dr Mehmet Zahit Adişen set out to change that.

“In our study, we found very high values of mercury after ultra-high-field MRI,” Dr. Yilmaz says. “This is possibly caused by phase change in amalgam material or by formation of microcircuits, which leads to electrochemical corrosion, induced by the magnetic field.”

The researchers began with a collection of teeth, opened two-sided cavities in each and applied amalgam fillings to the cavities. After nine days, three groups of 20 randomly selected teeth were placed in a solution of artificial saliva. One group of teeth was then subjected to 20 minutes of exposure to a 1.5-T MRI, the second was exposed to a 7-T MRI, while the control group of teeth received no exposure.

The artificial saliva from each batch was then analyzed for mercury content and it was found that the 7-T group had approximately four times the mercury levels of the 1.5-T and control groups.

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Ties: they’re what the majority of the men in the western working world wear day in, day out, around their necks. Some wear them way too long. Others wear them comically short. Some have bows, some wear bolos. But one widely-circulating study is making one thing certain: they restrict circulation of blood to your brain.

The study, which appeared in the journal Neuroradiology, took place at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Germany with 30 participants, half of whom had the blood flow to their heads observed while wearing a tie, while the other half went tie-free. The ties actually squeezed the veins that allowed the blood to reach the brain. It cuts off circulation by 7.5%. You might not be acutely aware of this, but it’s a sizable percentage; enough to make a potentially fatal difference if you already have high blood pressure (I did some research on this: you’d have to have REALLY high blood pressure to have a tight tie be the catalyst for your demise).

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We explain nothing.

Dude … have you ever, like, even thought about the number zero? It’s wild. Getty ImagesThe computer you’re reading this article on right now runs on a binary — strings of zeros and ones. Without zero, modern electronics wouldn’t exist. Without zero, there’s no calculus, which means no modern engineering or automation. Without zero, much of our modern world literally falls apart.

Humanity’s discovery of zero was “a total game changer … equivalent to us learning language,” says Andreas Nieder, a cognitive scientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

But for the vast majority of our history, humans didn’t understand the number zero. It’s not innate in us. We had to invent it. And we have to keep teaching it to the next generation.

Other animals, like monkeys, have evolved to understand the rudimentary concept of nothing. And scientists just reported that even tiny bee brains can compute zero. But it’s only humans that have seized zero and forged it into a tool.

So let’s not take zero for granted. Nothing is fascinating. Here’s why.

What is zero, anyway?

Getty Images

Our understanding of zero is profound when you consider this fact: We don’t often, or perhaps ever, encounter zero in nature.

Numbers like one, two, and three have a counterpart. We can see one light flash on. We can hear two beeps from a car horn. But zero? It requires us to recognize that the absence of something is a thing in and of itself.

“Zero is in the mind, but not in the sensory world,” Robert Kaplan, a Harvard math professor and an author of a book on zero, says. Even in the empty reaches of space, if you can see stars, it means you’re being bathed in their electromagnetic radiation. In the darkest emptiness, there’s always something. Perhaps a true zero — meaning absolute nothingness — may have existed in the time before the Big Bang. But we can never know.

Nevertheless, zero doesn’t have to exist to be useful. In fact, we can use the concept of zero to derive all the other numbers in the universe.

Kaplan walked me through a thought exercise first described by the mathematician John von Neumann. It’s deceptively simple.

There’s one object in it. Then, put another empty box inside the first two. How many objects does it contain now? Two. And that’s how “we derive all the counting numbers from zero … from nothing,” Kaplan says. This is the basis of our number system. Zero is an abstraction and a reality at the same time. “It’s the nothing that is,” as Kaplan said. (At this point in the story, you may want to take another hit on your bong.)

He then put it in more poetic terms. “Zero stands as the far horizon beckoning us on the way horizons do in paintings,” he says. “It unifies the entire picture. If you look at zero you see nothing. But if you look through it, you see the world. It’s the horizon.”

Once we had zero, we have negative numbers. Zero helps us understand that we can use math to think about things that have no counterpart in a physical lived experience; imaginary numbers don’t exist but are crucial to understanding electrical systems. Zero also helps us understand its antithesis, infinity, in all of its extreme weirdness. (Did you know that one infinity can be larger than another?)

Why zero is so damn useful in math

Zero’s influence on our mathematics today is twofold. One: It’s an important placeholder digit in our number system. Two: It’s a useful number in its own right.

The first uses of zero in human history can be traced back to around 5,000 years ago, to ancient Mesopotamia. There, it was used to represent the absence of a digit in a string of numbers.

Here’s an example of what I mean: Think of the number 103. The zero in this case stands for “there’s nothing in the tens column.” It’s a placeholder, helping us understand that this number is one-hundred and three and not 13.

Okay, you might be thinking, “this is basic.” But the ancient Romans didn’t know this. Do you recall how Romans wrote out their numbers? 103 in Roman numerals is CIII. The number 99 is XCIX. You try adding CIII + XCIX. It’s absurd. Placeholder notation is what allows us to easily add, subtract, and otherwise manipulate numbers. Placeholder notation is what allows us to work out complicated math problems on a sheet of paper.

If zero had remained simply a placeholder digit, it would have been a profound tool on its own. But around 1,500 years ago (or perhaps even earlier), in India, zero became its own number, signifying nothing. In the seventh century, the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta wrote down what’s recognized as the first written description of the arithmetic of zero:

When zero is added to a number or subtracted from a number, the number remains unchanged; and a number multiplied by zero becomes zero.

Zero slowly spread across the Middle East before reaching Europe, and the mind of the mathematician Fibonacci in the 1200s, who popularized the “Arabic” numeral system we all use today.

From there, the usefulness of zero exploded. Think of any graph that plots a mathematical function starting at 0,0. This now-ubiquitous method of graphing was only first invented in the 17th century after zero spread to Europe. That century also saw a whole new field of mathematics that depends on zero: calculus.

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A survey by CreditCards.com has data to show that millennials are the worst tippers; a full 10% of people age 18 to 37 will leave no tip at all when dining in a restaurant.

It could be that the generation hasn’t worked a lot of tipped jobs. It could be that millennials are worse off financially than the generations that came before them because of the Great Recession of 2008, so they’re not as likely to add 20% to the bill.

Interestingly, however, 25% of that generation would rather just pay a higher bill for service or food than worry about tipping. Among other demographic groups, 26% of people who make over $75,000 would also just rather pay a higher bill from the get-go, as do 30% of people with college degrees.

Germany has a law that servers must be paid a living wage. (Credit: GUENTER SCHIFFMANN/AFP/Getty Images)

“Tipping at sit-down restaurants has always been the standard in the U.S., but that’s not necessarily the case in other countries. We’re seeing younger adults tipping less, and even showing a greater preference toward eliminating tipping altogether, even if it means paying more on the bill,” says CreditCards.com senior industry analyst Matt Schulz.

The other groups revealed as low- or no-tip folks are Southerners and parents. Married couples without children were better tippers than those with offspring.

Find the interactive image at this link. (Credit: Department of Labor)

Other countries take the fretting out of it. Germany, among many, has laws on the books that servers must be paid a living wage, so folks are only expected to round up the bill; your take is $36? Just make it $40. It seems like a much more reasonable way to be in business than expecting customers to supplement wages, eh?

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“Here’s to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” So sayeth noted philosopher Homer Simpson. It’s the ubiquitous social lubricant that makes it easier to socialize, and some would say, freely speak our minds and reveal our true feelings to others.

But is alcohol really a truth serum? The short answer is yes, but only for the kind of truth that leaks out of a brain that’s not working too well. Which is to say, no, not really.

So what is going on when we tell someone we barely know how wonderful, no, I mean really great, they are when we’re smashed?

Alcohol, the Depressive Stimulant. Of Course You’re Confused.

As a depressant, alcohol reduces some neurotransmitters and increases others.

Alcohol reduces production of excitory neurotransmitters like glutamate that support clear thinking and produce energy.

Alcohol increases production of inhibitory neurotransmitters such as gamma-Aminobutyric acid, or “GABA,” which slows. Everything. Down.

Alcohol’s effect on your cerebral cortex is what makes your brain so, er, different when you’re drinking. This is where booze knocks clear thought off the rails, making you less careful about what you say and making Drunk You a stupid, brakes-off version of Real You.

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The most common question I received during my decades of vegetarianism concerned protein. People were fascinated that a human could receive adequate supplies of the macronutrient without consuming animal products. This became especially relevant when I dabbled in veganism for two years. Though I never receive that question anymore, the protein question persists, showing a profound ignorance of what constitutes a healthy diet.

Which protein is best is another story, and unfortunately, the answer is quite tribal. Many carnivores often default to the position that meat provides the most beneficial nutrient profile—the very term “protein” is freely exchanged for “meat.” On the flip side, forget about trying to source information from most vegan or holistic blogs. All you’ll (falsely) learn is that meat consumption is the most toxic act imaginable, or other heinous ideas, like eggs being as bad for you as cigarettes.

Let’s begin with two basic and indisputable facts:

Plants, nuts, and seeds provide enough protein to subsist on. Evolutionarily speaking, early animals needed to consume plants. There’s a reason the healthiest meats are “grass fed.” Fish, often considered the best source of meat (mercury problem aside), acquire their nutrient profile from aquatic plants.

Humans have long eaten animals. We’ve even eaten other families of human, and not just Neanderthals. While most Americans can afford a plant-based diet, other nations’ infrastructures (and cultures) are not equipped to handle such profound dietary changes. Meat is not toxic, though the industrial farming industry has inarguably created much unnecessary suffering and, along the way, a much less healthy product.

Stepping into this long-standing discussion, Popular Science recently declared plant protein to be superior. While it certainly may well be—few argue more dietary meat is better as a general guideline—let’s investigate the major points.

Nutrients and fiber

The author, Sara Chodosh, writes that while plants not only have most (but not all; specifically B12) of the nutrients meat provides, one essential carbohydrate is missing from meat: fiber. Duke University cardiology fellow Haider Warraich writes that constipation is an “American epidemic.” Every year, over 700,000 Americans visit the ER due to an inability to defecate. Millions more suffer from this issue.

Diet is the foremost reason, though, as Warraich points out, medications, especially opioids, also cause constipation. Humans need to consume plenty of roughage. Fiber not only helps digestion, Chodosh writes, but also “promotes a healthy gut microbiome and is strongly associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk.” She notes that plants offer more nutrients through fewer calories. For this reason, alone we should consider deriving most protein from plants.

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Hurricanes are Becoming More Dangerous

A growing body of research is showing that hurricanes are becoming more dangerous. A recent analysis by noted climate scientists, though not a peer-reviewed study, suggested that even as the winds that move hurricanes along are getting weaker, the winds inside hurricanes are getting stronger.

The threats aren’t limited to those who live along coastlines.

”Freshwater flooding is particularly dangerous because that happens inland and people don’t typically evacuate,” Kossin said. “If you live in a place with any sort of mountainous area — or any topography at all, really — then you have that compound danger of mudslides. As it’s turning out, it’s the freshwater flooding that poses the highest mortality risk nowadays in certain regions.”

(Kossin is James Kossin, a climate scientist with the National Centers for Environmental Information at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

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What you’d need to earn per hour in each U.S. state to afford a standard 2-BR apartment. (Image: National Low Income Housing Coalition)

A full-time minimum wage isn’t enough money to rent an averagely priced one-bedroom home anywhere in the U.S., according to an annual report issued recently by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The report illustrates the stark reality facing low-income workers in the U.S. For instance, a full-time worker earning $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum wage, would need to work 122 hours a week to afford a modest two-bedroom rental home, priced at the national average fair market rent of $1,149, and still have money left for other necessities.

“The same worker needs to work 99 hours per week for all 52 weeks of the year, or approximately two and a half full-time jobs, to afford a one-bedroom home at the national average fair market rent,” the report reads. “In no state, metropolitan area, or county can a worker earning the federal minimum wage or prevailing state minimum wage afford a two-bedroom rental home at fair market rent by working a standard 40-hour week.”

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An artist’s rendition of Sedna, a dwarf planet that lurks on the edge of the Solar System(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Over the last few years, there’s been growing evidence for a huge, ninth planet lurking on the very edges of the Solar System. The dwarf planets and other icy bodies out there move in mysterious ways that suggest an unseen world is pulling on them, but new calculations suggest that there is no Planet Nine – these distant objects might just be jostling each other like bumper cars.

Ten years after Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet, the possibility of a new Planet Nine was put forward by a Caltech team in January 2016. The key evidence was the highly eccentric orbits of some Kuiper Belt objects, which are tilted 30 degrees off-kilter from the rest of the planets. Plus, their sheer distance from the Sun and the eight known planets doesn’t really make sense yet.

In the years since, more evidence of a ninth planet has turned up in the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects and the wobble of the Sun, while other astronomers have modeled its composition and even floated the idea of a Mars-sized 10th planet. But since Planet Nine has yet to be directly observed, some scientists are naturally questioning its existence. Can the quirks of these distant objects be explained some other way?

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THE PERMIAN BASIN “WILL PROBABLY BECOME THE WORLD’S LARGEST OIL PATCH,” says Bloomberg, drawing from research of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. If someone asks that basic Wall Street question in Fort Worth or Midland, “WHERE’S THE NEW MONEY BEING MADE?” the answer is quick and simple for those who know what is going on in West Texas and Southeast New Mexico. Just look at the pink area, the Permian Basin, on the map. This area, a long-proven oil and gas area, is seeing production multiplied by new drilling methods, technology and equipment. Towns and cities in this area are awash in new business. High-paying jobs with huge sums of money are flowing in. And if trend studies are correct, this area will in the next few years be the world’s largest and most valuable oil field. An entire new generation of “new wealth” is already in the making.

Bloomberg: Permian “will probably become the world’s largest oil patch.”

With crude oil production expected to reach 3.18 million barrels a day in the Permian Basin this month, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Bloomberg said the basin “will probably become the world’s largest oil patch over the next decade.” The May output would be the highest since the agency began compiling records in 2007. “The technology is the biggest driver,” Robert Thummel, managing director at investment adviser Tortoise, told Bloomberg. “The basin … could end up being the largest oil field in the world.” He added, “If the Permian was part of OPEC, it would be the fourth largest OPEC member – right behind Saudia Arabia, Iran and Iraq.” Source: PBOGF (Permian Basin Petroleum Association Magazine, May 2018)

Phillips 66 Partners to build pipeline from Permian to Texas coast

Houston-based Phillips 66 Partners said April 24 it will build the Gray Oak Pipeline to carry crude oil from the Permian Basin to the Texas Gulf Coast. The pipeline will be owned by Gray Oak Pipeline, a joint venture of Phillips 66 Partners (75 percent) and Andeavor (25 percent). Originating stations will be constructed in Crane, Loving, Reeves and Winkler in West Texas as well as in Eagle, Ford and Shale in South Texas. The pipeline will deliver crude oil to Corpus Christi and the Freeport/Sweeny markets. In Corpus Christi, Gray Oak will connect to a new joint venture marine terminal under development by Buckeye Partners.

Exxon to become most active driller in Permian Basin by year end

ExxonMobil could become the most active driller in the Permian Basin by the end of 2018 with its plan for at least 30 operating rigs, according to Bloomberg. Currently, Concho Resources is the most active driller with 26 rigs, including its acquisition of RSP Permian, Bloomberg said last week. ExxonMobil entered the Permian shale fields in 2010 with its acquisition of XTO Energy, but the impact on Exxon’s global production was minimal. But, Bloomberg added, “Now it’s becoming a critical component of the company’s strategy.”

“It wants to increase production to around 800,000 barrels a day by 2025, equivalent to about 20 percent of its global output today.”

Jeff Woodbury, vice president of investor relations at Exxon, told reporters April 27 that the higher rig count and better efficiency in well completion rates will help grow Permian production in the second half of 2018, but Permian growth will at best offset declines elsewhere.

He said there’s “no change to our communicated guidance that we would be generally flat with 2017.” But with the price of West Texas Crude Oil at $69.72 (up from the mid $30 range just 15 months ago), a new boom is in process. This is generating a need for new roads, new housing, new support companies, new industrial buildings, new people to fill the “Help Wanted” advertisements — new everything. Ben Boothe, President of BBAR Inc. (https://benboothe.com) said, “When these booms hit, they are caused by a combination of factors. In this case, EXXON just purchased a large group of natural gas drilling leases, then the price of oil began to rise, while the national economic recovery continued. All hit at once. This causes real estate appraised values to rise rapidly in boom areas, which gives bankers confidence to lend more money. All combined creates an enormous economic impact. It has created new demand for appraisal work, environmental work (for the oil men), and feasibility studies (for new developers).”

Most production and drilling locations marked.

Texas and New Mexico have a large number of active drilling rigs. Texas and the U.S. added oil and gas rigs in the past week, but it was without help from the Permian Basin. According to the Baker Hughes report of April 27, the Permian Basin (452 rigs) in West Texas and the Eagle Ford Shale (75) in South Texas were down one rig each from the previous week. But Texas was up four to 513 rigs, and the U.S. was up eight to 1,021. This time a year ago, there were 342 rigs in the Permian Basin, 83 in the Eagle Ford, 437 in Texas, with 870 in the United States. Baker Hughes said there were 87 active rigs in New Mexico – down three in the past week and up 32 in the past year. It remains the No. 3 state in active rigs. Three of the top four counties in the Permian Basin lost rigs in the past week. Reeves was down one to 66, Midland was down two to 51, Lea, N.M., was unchanged at 47, and Eddy, N.M., was down two to 38.

Rig counts as of April 27 in the other top regions were Cana Woodford with 70 (61 a week ago, 55 a year ago), Williston with 56 (53 a week ago, 44 a year ago), Marcellus with 54 (55 a week ago, 46 a year ago) and Haynesville with 53 (52 a week ago, 38 a year ago). Rig counts as of April 27 in the other top states were Oklahoma runner-up with 133 (127 a week ago, 127 a year ago), Louisiana fourth with 60 (58 a week ago, 58 a year ago) and North Dakota with 55 (52 a week ago, 44 a year ago).

The numbers are in, the counts have been made, and today the FTC announced what we heard from you during 2017. Here are some highlights:
This year’s top fraud is again Imposter Scams, with nearly 350,000 reports. Nearly 1 in 5 people who reported an imposter scam lost money – a whopping $328 million lost to someone pretending to be a loved one in trouble, a government official, tech support, or someone else who’s not who they say they are, but who wants your money.
We heard from nearly 2.7 million people last year. There were fewer debt collection reports in 2017 (23% of all reports), but it’s still the top category by a wide margin, followed by identity theft (14%), which overtook imposter scams (13%) for the number two slot in 2017.
For everyone who reported identity theft, credit card fraud tops the list, and continues to grow. Reports of tax fraud are down 46%, but it was still reported by nearly 63,000 people.
Of the more than 1.1 million people who reported fraud, 21% told us they lost a total of more than $905 million. That’s an increase of $63 million from 2016.
People reported that scammers mostly contacted them by phone, and they mostly paid for frauds – once again – by wire transfer. But check out the $74 million in losses on credit cards, which are charges that could potentially be disputed and recovered, if done in time.
Median losses tell an interesting story: for all fraud reports in 2017, the median loss was $429. Compare that to a $500 median loss to imposters, a $720 median fraud loss to scams that come in by phone, a $1,710 median loss related to travel, vacations and timeshares. Among military consumers, median losses were higher than the general population — $619.
More younger people reported losing money to fraud than older people – but when people aged 70 and older had a loss, it was a much higher median loss than other groups.
And, based on reports per 100,000 population, the top states for fraud reports were Florida, Georgia and Nevada. For identity theft, it’s Michigan, Florida and California.
Have you spotted any scams? If so, tell the FTC – and then come back this time next year to hear what happened during 2018.

Santa Fe, NM – State Auditor Wayne Johnson [recently] released the final audit of a $10.5 million federally-funded project meant to bring broadband connectivity to communities across northern New Mexico. The audit found nearly $1,000,000 in expenses that can’t be accounted for, 12.12 miles of missing fiber optic cable worth nearly $200,000, and a lack of financial controls to ensure compliance with laws, regulations, policies, and grant agreements.

Johnson’s office continues to look for missing documentation and has served several subpoenas on contractors and vendors who received significant payments from the broadband project.